January 21, 2008

Sunk Science : If At First You Don't Believe

......................DENY, DENY, AGAIN

PLANET GORE , National Review's climate blog for true disbelievers , is back at the forefront of cognitive dissonance with Roy Spencer asking:

'Global Warming' Deniers? What About The 'Reality Deniers'Everyone has heard of "global warming deniers," which is what Al Gore (in his usual half-truth fashion) likes to call those of us who believe that current global warmth might not be man-made. Well, in my view the truly dangerous group of people out there are the "Reality Deniers" — those who not only believe that global warming is man-made, but also think that we can do something significant about it in the next 20 years or so.
Given today's Michigan Primary, people should know that some politicians (e.g. John McCain) have bought into this policy falsehood." 01/15 08:16

Climate modelers often deserve to be taken to task for eliding illusion and reality. But computer modeling has become as much a technological fact of life as the internet --adducing the output of the video games climatologists play as a policy guide is little different from the Fed using its elaborate econometric models as indicators of what inflation is up to. Both take care to keep garbage from going in, and to minimize the amount ground out as well, and both caution against projecting black and white outcomes on the banks of plausible fog that statistical models generate.

Hollywood revels in turning equations into screen monsters by rendering them as computer animations, and many of the horrors excitable Greens (and Gold Bugs) point to are still just ghosts in a machine. But even science fiction has its limits. When it comes to the interaction of man and climate, It goes beyond the outer limits of scientific plausibility to assert that nothing can result from doing anything for a generation- " the next 20 years or so ", because both technology's ability to physically change the world, and computation's capacity to integrate the results, are growing exponentially. Roy Spencer has editorially declared :

" I believe that, through various negative feedback mechanisms, the
atmosphere "decides" how much of the available sunlight will be allowed
in,...and what
the average temperature will be...

I believe that when the stabilizing effects of precipitation
systems are better understood and included into the models, predictions
of global warming will be scaled back."

It's not a very comforting thought, because "for 20 years or so" he failed to detect the instrumental and software bias against climate change built into in the satellite data base he was tasked to manage, and which he pointed to as the ultimate arbiter of the question of man made cliate change:

"But how good is the evidence, and how likely is substantial global warming? When might it happen? Applying the customary standards of scientific inquiry, one must conclude that there has been more hype than solid facts ... . New, precise satellite data raise further questions about warming.

From 1979 to 1988 large temperature variability was recorded, but no obvious temperature trend was noted during the 10-year period...What should be the national response to the above uncertainties?...Whatever we do should he based on well-thought-out long-range goals. It should not result from a half-baked political response. ' --R.W. Spencer & J. R. ChristyPrecise Monitoring of Global Temperature Trends from Satellites , Science 247 (March 30, 1990): 1558

This failure of oversight, like that of Fred Singer, who styles himself "first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service' rendered policy analysts reluctant to acknowledge the scientific outcome of the atmosphere's answer to inflation. The climate policy debate is about the upward forcing of radiative equilibrium by a continuing increase in the CO2 supply.

Thirty years ago, global climate and macroeconomics had much in common. It could be said with reasonable confidence that nobody knew what either was doing. Today we are not so sure. It is no longer seemly for the co-author of one of the capital errors of a generation ago to invoke his own authority in insisting that as civilization moves from technological strength to strength, it cannot do by design what it has already accomplished by accident. This has naturally given rise to a new intellectual cottage industry in the nation's capital.

SunkScience .com

"Sunk science" is an all
too objective description of the farrago of faulty scientific
data and analysis K-Street lawyer and Disinformation artiste Steve "
The Science Junkman " Milloy is paid to merchandise as dittohead
fodder and idiotarian advertorial content. Though he caters to newspapers lacking fact checkers and science editors. It is unfair to characterize the products of this transparently mercenary enterprise as 'politicized science ' for though junkScience.Com customarily fails to mention its client’s corporate or religious agendas, its products scientific content is negligible. Here with thanks to Steve for the most lucid format seen since the freeze movement paid Porter Novelli to merchandise Nuclear Winter, is a precis of The JunkScience.Com bill of fare modified to reflect the semiotic reality of today. The sunk science "mob"
includes:

The NONMAINSTREAM MEDIA may use sunk science
for sensational headlines and programming designed to distract The
Base from science itself. Many beltway boys use sunk science to advance their and their employers'
social and political agendas.

CAMPUS LAWYERS may use sunk science to bamboozle alumni into awarding huge grants to promote their take on political correctness, which is to complain that they are not able to
impose their own. Large headlines may then be used to extort even greater sums from foundations fearful of riling The Base.

LEGAL ACTIVISTS,
such as the " Front Page Front," environmental know-nothings , and
Oklahoma gun enthusiasts denied professorships for packing , may use
sunk science to achieve tenure and hit Henry Regnery for book advances .

GOVERNMENT DEREGULATORS may use sunk science to expand their grantsmanship and to increase their lobbying budgets.

BUSINESSES may lawfully use sunk science
to bad-mouth competitors who have actual scientists on their payrolls
and pay attention to astute customers , or to make bogus claims about
their own products.

POLITICIANS may use sunk science to curry favor with special interest groups or to be "politically
correct."

INDIVIDUALSCIENTISTS may use sunk science
to achieve fortune at considerable cost in infamy . mercifully few
volunteer, so sunk science relies heavily on meme recycling

INDIVIDUALS too innumerate to read the scientific literature may use sunk science to demonstrate the futility of non-faith based policies relying on such avatars of scientific fundamentalism TM as global warmism, molecular geneticism, germ theory of diseasism and disbelief in the ability of beets to cure AIDS and the common cold.

Comments

A theory is an explanation it must explain what has been observed and be useful to predict the results of future experiment.

By this standard, which is the only one a person can call scientific, the idea of carbon dioxide causing catastrophic global warming or being a major climate forcer on the earth is dead.

When are you going to take the pseudo scientists to task for the entire surface record; now clearly shown to have a huge upward bias?

This post is a personal attack on someone for holding a valid opinion which while not widely accepted is defensible from the data. The more widely believed opinion of imminent catastrophy can not be supportted from the data yet does not recieve your vitriol.

Claims about the environment have become a fertile arena for media attention and political debate, supported by scientific studies. In the cause of the environment, unsound ideas are sometimes championed, based on incomplete evidence or narrow understanding. News accounts on environmental topics are a landscape ripe for satire by someone with facility in scientific methods. Within a democracy awash in claims based on studies, Milloy may serve a useful function as an entertaining debunker of eco-scares within the media.
Milloy sometimes raises good points. Nonetheless, there seem at least two possible downsides. Some people revere preservation of the earth and its living things. For them, a satirist of their beliefs could seem unkind. Also, Milloy aims to entertain. To this end, he may sometimes offer unsound criticisms. Caveat emptor.

If Milloy confined himself to real questioning, did not continue to propagate huge amounts of clear falsehood, or didn’t have such a trail of cash tied to him you might be able to balance on your peg leg while defending him. Your dismissal of the explanatory supporting data as being derived from "pseudo scientists", while urging Mr. Seitz to give credit to a claim found wanting after extensive reexamination, shows me an ideological basis for your angst, rather than your claimed objective one. Or, you haven’t looked very carefully at all the data.

Alternative explanations fail to show their signature in the observations. I find the relative increases in night and colder season measurements particularly compelling evidence for alteration of atmospheric chemistry being the strongest causative agent. The physics is rather straightforward and in agreement with distinctive features in the observations.

I agree with you, I wasn't actually talking about Milloy. I was referrring to the deliberate slap at Roy Spencer; who for being honest and correcting a mistake is presented as an incompetent. I would be a lot happier if several others in the debate would quit using long disproven work as the basis of their arguments.

Perhaps you find it persuasive, but a number of measurements notably stratospheric temperature measurements directly falsify the CO2 caused warming hypothesis. In order for CO2 to be the cause you must have a match. In other words the CO2 signature is also lacking.

Being occasionally right, sometimes, in some studies, is not enough to make something a Theory. Being wrong even once means discard or modify the theory. Honest scientists have been trying to modify the theory for 20 years. But the public still hears the sick fantasy stories.
RESPONSE
I hastened to compliment Roy on his candid response to the discovery of the cumulative satellite error as published in Science in 2005, but that does not excuse what he has just said in NRO, which has the opposite effect.

If your comment refers to the much heralded news that the 3D GCM's still cant handle the tropopause near the ITC , so what- model parametrization problems in silico have nothing to do with the reality of the optical depth and multicomponent radiative equilibrium and transmission of the gases in the atmospheric column- what's wrong with the model needs fixing , but that's not to say the natural history it can't emulate dynamically is broke.

The celebrated methods of Calaveras County, indeed. One wonders what Samuel L. might make of contemporary doings? Where would the great man find humor today? Would he be a columnist or offer a blog? Clemens enjoyed earning money from writing. Would Twain delight in the antics of leaders whose policies rest on the august foundation of Science?

A Connecticut Yankee in King Dubya's court? Thank you for smoking? How would George Barnard Shaw handle the topic of environmental politics? With zest?

Some dismiss Milloy as a flack owned by evil industrialists. This image may be reassuringly simplifying to some. One strength of Milloy is that he can communicate acessibly, making him a formidable opponent for advocates of junk science, whose ranks are by no means inconsiderable.

The Irony is how you call for science to be kept in the realm of science yet constantly bash Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy for sticking by their data until it was shown that their satellites might be effected by orbital decay. They then release a paper to this extent as you would request and you still chastise them? Yet the corrected Satellite record still shows a very weak warming trend and you fail to mention this but have no problem exaggerating what the actual error was. Yet no mention of the massive "adjustments" hansen has made to his record?

As a half dozen articles critical of Hansen have thus far appeared in this blog, the issue is hype onyourpart not hypocrisy on mine. Christy and Spencer are not the objet of criticismhere- this is http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2789

"It's not a very comforting thought, because "for 20 years or so" he failed to detect the instrumental and software bias against climate change built into in the satellite data base he was tasked to manage, and which he pointed to as the ultimate arbiter of the question of man made climate change"

It took YEARS before the orbital drift issue was even discovered, with no doubt many scientists desperate to disprove the satellite record looking for errors. It seems a little ridiculous to use this as a measure of his competency. Dr. Spencer and Christy released their code upon request for peer-review as I presume you would want them to in the interest of science. They openly published their findings and you take issue with them using their evidence to question AGW?

It is clear Hypocrissy to demand adherance to science while criticizing someone for doing just that, whether you agree with their position or not.